I happened upon Joseph Wade Wilkerson's obituary the other day while reading through The Chariton Patriot of Christmas Day, 1872, to see if I could find anything interesting from the Lucas County of 150 years ago to write about in 2022.
Wilkerson was among the most prominent of Lucas County's early attorneys --- but due to the tuberculosis (aka consumption) that claimed his life at 39 on the 23rd of December, 1872, he's been largely forgotten. His wife and younger children already were dead by the time of his passing and although he left a son, "little Joe," that young man eventually died of consumption, too, at the age of 23 in 1889. So an entire family vanished.
If nothing else, Wilkerson's Christmas day obituary serves as a reminder of just how deadly, most often to younger people in the prime of life, tuberculosis once was.
His remains were taken by train from Chariton to Burlington on that long-ago Christmas Eve for burial beside the remains of his wife, Maria, in Aspen Grove Cemetery, but no tombstone ever was erected. So the battered remains of her tombstone, shown here, is their only marker.
Here's the text of Mr. Wilkerson's obituary:
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Death of J. W. Wilkerson Esq. --- We are pained to announce the death of our friend and townsman J.W. Wilkerson. As is generally known, he has been suffering for years with consumption, which disease resulted in his death at three o'clock on Monday morning last (Dec. 23d).
Mr. W. was born on the 21st day of December, 1833, in Rock Island County, Ill. (we believe) and was hence 39 years old at the time of his death. At the age of 19 he had a severe attack of measles that so affected his lungs as to bring on the terrible disease that has been gradually preying on his system ever since.
He studied law at Galena, Ills., and came to this county about 15 years ago, where he has since resided, and been engaged in the practice of his profession. Some six or seven years ago he was married to a Miss Cox of Burlington, who died suddenly of heart disease in a couple of years afterwards. The deceased had recently returned from California, where he had gone in hopes to recover partially his health.
His funeral services here took place on Tuesday afternoon. The members of the Masonic Fraternity as well as the Lucas county bar attended, in a body, and escorted his remains to the train that carried him to Burlington, where he will be buried near his wife.
He leaves "Little Joe," his only child, who is about five years old, and a host of friends to mourn his loss. The members of the bar held a meeting and appointed a committee to draft resolutions expressing their feelings on the occasion of his death, and their sympathy with his bereaved relatives and friends.
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Census records 1850-1860 of Jo Daviess County, Illinois, and of Lucas County, Iowa, 1860-1870, show that J.W. was born in Indiana, rather than Illinois, as the obituary suggests. His parents, James and Margaret A. Wilkerson, who were farmers, brought their family west soon after J.W.’s birth and they lived briefly in Illinois and then in Scott County, Iowa, before settling down in Jo Daviess County, perhaps during 1850.
J.W. had arrived in Chariton by June 11, 1860, when he was enumerated in the federal census of that year as an attorney boarding in the home of James Baker, also an attorney, and Baker’s family. His assets were modest, $200 in real estate and $200 in personal property, suggesting he had not been in the profession long. James Baker may have been his first partner.
Because of his impaired health, he did not serve during the Civil War but continued a solo practice in Chariton. By 1867 he was practicing in partnership with Napoleon Bonaparte Branner who had recently returned to Chariton from service in the Confederate army. Their offices were in the 1858 courthouse, then Chariton's principal building.
J.W. married during the early 1860s, probably at Burlington, Maria Louisa Cock. Maria’s father, Oliver Cock, of Burlington, was a brother of Robert Coles, who had changed his name from “Cock” to “Coles” by act of the Iowa Legislature in 1853, the year he settled with his family in Chariton. It may have been that family connection with Lucas County that provided the opportunity for J.W. and Maria to meet.
J.W. and Maria probably had three children during the 1860s, two of whom died as infants. A badly weathered tombstone in the Chariton Cemetery marks the graves of “Our Babes,” children of J.W. and M.L. Wilkerson. The surviving child, Joseph A., was born in 1866 in Chariton.
Maria died at Chariton in the late 1860s “suddenly of heart disease,” according to J.W’s obituary. Although her death is cited in published accounts as the first in St. Andrew’s Parish, no year is cited. Her body was taken to Aspen Grove Cemetery in Burlington for burial beside her father, Oliver Cock, who had died in 1861.
When the 1870 census was taken on Sept. 1 of that year, the widowed J.W. and his son, age 3, were living with several of his siblings, perhaps on the farm adjoining Chariton to the east called Cottage Grove that he and Maria had developed into something of a showplace. Those siblings were his sister, Maria (actually, Emeriah), age 26; and brothers John V., 24, Eugene, 22, and Willard, 17. Although all of the younger Wilkerson males were enumerated as farmers, Eugene had studied law, too, and reportedly practiced with his brother for a time.
Although J.W.’s assets had increased substantially between 1860 and 1870 ($12,000 in real estate and $10,500 in personal property according to the census entry) his health had declined. He attempted to recover in California during 1872, but returned home in the fall of that year and died in Chariton on Dec. 23.
Joseph A. Wilkerson, age 5 at the time of his father’s death, was raised in Chariton by his aunt, Emeriah, who never married and remained a Lucas County resident until after 1900 when she moved to California. Although his health apparently had been impaired since childhood, Joseph A. was working as a printer by the time of his death in 1889.
During 1887-1888, Joseph sought relief in California and in the mountains of Arizona Territory and thought for a time that he had found it, but the remission was temporary and he returned to Chariton, where he died on June 20, 1889.
The Chariton Patriot of June 26, 1889, characterizes him thus: “His natural intellectual endowments were of high order, and with adequate health would have gained him distinguished position. His sense of humor was quick and incisive, and he perceived intuitively the weakness and shams of human nature. He had a wise head for one so young and many a quiet smile will come at the memory of his quaint and pungent wit.”
Lucas County death records show that Joseph was buried in the Chariton Cemetery, most likely beside his infant siblings who had died in the 1860s. His grave is not marked, however.
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